In the last hours of Wednesday, Oct. 16, as most members of Congress hustled to come up with a way to end the federal government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, two powerful House committees spent five hours grilling National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis on why the parks and monuments were closed up tight.
The hearing was set by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Committee on Natural Resources and titled ?As Difficult as Possible: the National Park Services Implementation of the Government Shutdown.?
I?ve never had any warm and fuzzy feelings about Jonathan Jarvis. In fact, he strikes me as rather arrogant. And, certainly, many of us on Hatteras and Ocracoke feel that the Park Service can definitely overreach ? as it did with the Off-Road Vehicle Plan and Final Rule here on the seashore.
However, this partisan media spectacle was over the top. For five hours, Republicans made speeches ? as though they had no part in the shutdown ? and grilled Jarvis. Some were downright mean and nasty.
Then Democrats made speeches supporting Jarvis by noting such things as that there were other significant government programs shut down and that the NPS budget is an ever-shrinking small percentage of overall federal expenditures.
However, people love their parks and veterans being turned away from war memorials make great photo ops.
So, they kept coming after Jarvis until he had been asked about almost every single park, monument, road, parking area, and overlook in the country.
Jarvis was first invited to the meeting, and told the committees that he would come as soon as the shutdown was over to answer questions.
Instead, the committee chairmen subpoenaed him.
The point about this hearing is not that it should not have happened. Most of us can probably agree that there were some things required of the parks during closure that need to be re-examined before the next one, which maybe isn?t that far down the road.
A good example is the blanket requirement that all businesses with concession agreements with the NPS had to close. In the seashore, that meant that Avon Pier and the Oregon Inlet Fishing Center were shut down.
There was no good reason for that, and the NPS relented on Day 12 and allowed them to reopen.
The point is that there is no way this should have happened when and how it did. Many committee members were obviously out for blood and didn?t know when to stop.
In that kind of a partisan atmosphere, nothing good or useful was going to happen. And it didn?t.
Let?s hope the issue of the NPS shutdown guidelines get a calmer, cooler look in the weeks to come.
If you have insomnia some night, you can still see the entire five-hour show at http://oversight.house.gov/hearing/difficult-possible-national-park-services-implementation-government-shutdown/.
One thing that did strike me after five hours of this craziness is that many parks had it far worse than we did here at the seashore.
Our park service staffers who remained on the job, mostly law enforcement rangers, were led by Chief Ranger Paul Stevens, a veteran of the 1995 and 1996 shutdowns at the seashore.
He knew what was and was not achievable with a skeleton staff when it came to enforcing edicts from Washington. In the hearing, Jarvis said he has instructed law enforcement to be ?low-key? at the local park level.
And that?s just what we got here.
Park rangers chained and barricaded ramps and drew the line at ORVs on the beach. However, no one was prohibited from parking in the technically closed parking areas and walking over to the technically closed beach.
Park Rangers exchanged pleasantries with some of the marchers as they walked around barricades for the ?People?s Beach? march to the old lighthouse site. All was peaceful.
When parking in the Highway 12 right-of-way became a public safety issue, some of the barricades were removed at the Canadian Hole/Haulover area to allow kiteboarders and windsurfers access.
I?ve heard many people say that the Park Service did an outstanding job under difficult circumstances. Visitors may not have been happy about the shutdown but were willing to live with it, and some even complimented the rangers.
I would agree that those Park Service folks who worked straight through the closure without pay deserve recognition and our thanks ? something most of them aren?t used to after the past few contentious years here.
On the last day of the shutdown, I asked one owner of a business that caters to tourists how it was going.
He thought for a minute, shrugged, and answered, ?Better than a hurricane.?
And that?s about sums it up.
Yesterday and today residents and visitors got back to business as usual at the seashore.
Meanwhile, members of Congress, having worked so hard these past few weeks, took another vacation.
PARK SERVICE STAFF WHO WORKED DURING THE SHUTDOWN
Staff members who worked during the entire shutdown include Chief Ranger Paul Stevens; Public Information Officer Cyndy Holda; Bodie Island District Ranger Ben McKay and rangers Bill Reynolds, Alex Heyer, Lynne Belanich, and Jon Anglin, park ranger and operations supervisor; Hatteras Island District Ranger David Carter and rangers Peter Malionek, Ben Brdlik, Mark Krebs, and Jeff Goad; Ocracoke Island District Ranger Ed Fuller and rangers Shane Bryan, Josh Vann, and Corey Cutwright, and Laura Michaels, caretaker of the Ocracoke ponies.
Employees who worked during some of the shutdown include Mac McKeller, Fort Raleigh Water Plant Operator; Shelly Rollinson, Frisco Water Plant Operator/District Maintenance Supervisor; Dick Bryant, Visitor Use Assistant, Oregon Inlet Campground; Deidra Smith, Visitor Use Assistant, Frisco Campground; Sarah Richardson, Visitor Use Assistant, Ocracoke Campground; Stosh Wompierski, Hatteras Island maintenance worker; Paul Doshkov, Biological Technician, Bodie Island District; Eric Frey, Biological Technician, Hatteras Island District; Will Thompson, Biological Technician, Hatteras Island District. Superintendent Barclay Trimble and Deputy Superintendent Darrell Echols also worked some during the shutdown.
(Next week, we really will return to examining the tax filings of environmental groups involved in lawsuits that are affecting the seashore.)
